Armenian News – NEWS.am presents the abridged version of the article by the Editorial Board published in The New York Times:

“When does a congressional fact-finding trip become an embarrassing junket? Ten House members and 32 of their staff members should be pondering that question now that their all-expenses-paid trip to Baku two years ago has been found by ethics investigators to have been secretly financed by Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company. That would be a violation of House ethics rules and federal law against foreign governments’ intruding into United States policy.

According to an Office of Congressional Ethics report obtained this month by The Washington Post, the congressional junketeers were feted and showered with gifts during a visit to Baku, receiving crystal tea sets, silk scarves, Azerbaijani rugs and thousands of dollars’ worth of hotel and airline fees paid by the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, known as Socar. Two Texas-based nonprofit groups that promote American-Azerbaijan relations acted as conduits through which Socar allegedly funneled $750,000 to pay the tab while masking the state company’s role, investigators said.

The trip and its postmortem give an idea of how the House ethics process works, or doesn’t work. It remains to be seen how the investigation will play out. What’s already clear is the need for the ethics committee to apply far greater scrutiny to trip proposals and their true sponsors when lawmakers seek the cover of pre-approval.”